Research & Finding Tools

Writing a research paper can be challenging. With the right tools and resources, the process can be less complicated. The resources below have been developed to help improve the process.Contact the Reference Librarians for further assistance or help.

Finding materials on the history of Prairie View – Special Collections/Archives is located on the fifth floor of the Library. Call or email on availability of material on your topic.

You are able to check-out items from many other area Texas Libraries. You must first get a TexShare card first.

Interlibrary Loan allows you to order books and articles we do not own. Look for the link Request from ILL when searching for articles and books. World Cat is a great place to search for Books and other formats!

Evaluation & Preparation

Copyright – John B. Coleman Library observes the United States copyright legislation (title 17, U.S. Code). If you need help in interpreting copyright please see the Copyright Office Website for assistance.Evaluating Print Sources – Strategies to evaluate secondary printed sources—books, journal articles, magazines, etc. How do you determine if a book is “scholarly?” Is Your Journal Scholarly? Finding Peer Reviewed Material – Plagiarism – What plagiarism is and steps to avoid plagiarizing. Editing and Proofreading – It’s hard to edit or proofread a paper that you’ve just finished writing Is Your Web Site Credible? – Finding information on the World Wide Web is one thing, trusting it is another. You must be a critical consumer of materials you find on the Web. Quality and validity are not guaranteed when anyone can publish anything, anytime, without the benefit of scholarly peer review. Use this guide to analyze the web sites you find.

Tools

Citation Tools

These resources will attempt to format your citation for you. They will get you probably 80% of the way there,
but mistakes happen! Double check the citation with a handbook.

End Note – ( With End Note the online bibliographic databases, you can organize your references, images and PDFs in any language, and create bibliographies and figure lists instantly.

RefWorks – Web-based bibliography and database manager that allows you to create your own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases and other various sources. You can use these references in writing papers and automatically format the paper and the bibliography in seconds

Write-N-Cite – Is a utility that allows users to run an abbreviated version of RefWorks in their word processor. It works with your word-processor to create citations while you are writing your paper. With Write-N-Cite, you can cite references in a manuscript instantly. There are multiple versions of Write-N-Cite available—depending on your preferred operating system.

Installing Write-N-Cite – Logon on to your RefWorks account, select Tools pull down menu and select Write-N-Write. Follow the instructions. You must have administrators rights to Install Write-N-Cite feature on your computer.

Cite While You Write (also known as CWYW) is a key feature of End Note. It allows you to access End Note from within Microsoft Word to insert citations into your Word documents. You can insert citations anytime during your writing process.

You can also use Cite While You Write to insert images (figures) from an End Note library into your Word documents. CWYW automatically builds a bibliography from the citations you insert. You can also create a list of figures.

Installing Cite While You Write Log on to your End Note Account (http://www.myendnoteweb.com) and select Options. Select Download Installers from the Options menu and follow the instructions. You must have administrators’ rights to install the Cite While You Write feature on your computer.